stloopadm's blog

As a conference organizer, I've had a number of excellent gurus that have helped me through the rough parts of running a conference (and I hope I've given some useful advice to others as well). One essential resource is the fantastic mailing list for regional Ruby conferences. They were gracious enough to allow me onto the list even though Strange Loop isn't technically apropos.

Anyhow, a question came up on the list today about why you hold your conference? Why does your conference exist?

Chris Houser (aka @chrishouser) is the co-author (with Michael Fogus) of the forthcoming book The Joy of Clojure. Chris will be speaking at Strange Loop 2010 on Clojure's Solutions to the Expression Problem. During the day, Chris works at Sentry Data Systems building a distributed application platform.

Strange Loop: How did you get started programming? What was your first programming language?

The latest Java Posse episode (#317) features a short segment (start around 51:45) of the posse talking about the Strange Loop conference. The Java Posse are giving away four FREE (as in beer) tickets based on a contest.

The contest is: "Write the strangest loop" (any language is ok). You should post your answer to the JavaPosse Google group and list the number (out of 4) you possibly could use. The answer will be judged by the posse (and me!).

Today I'm introducing a new promotional program for bloggers!

If you write a blog about your experiences at the Strange Loop 2009 conference OR why you're excited about attending Strange Loop 2010 between now and Thursday Aug. 5th, I will give you a choice between:

• A discount code for $25 off on Strange Loop 2010 registration. If you've already registered, I'll send you a refund
• A t-shirt from Strange Loop 2009

To participate:

I have added a Student attendee rate of $100 due to the continuing interest from students at local schools like Washington University, SIU Edwardsville, etc. If you are a student and can supply a valid ID at registration time, then feel free to register at this rate!

I have released the full schedule for Strange Loop 2010 and it is (in my humble opinion) a truly mind-blowing set of talks and speakers.

Check out these keynotes:

• Guy Steele (Oracle) - "How to Think about Parallel Programming: Not!"
• Douglas Crockford (Yahoo) - "Heresy and Heretical Open Source: A Heretic's Perspective"
• Billy Newport (IBM) - "Enterprise NoSQL: Silver Bullet or Poison Pill?"
• Hilary Mason (bit.ly) - "Machine Learning: A Love Story"

Time for an update on Strange Loop 2010!

Particulars

I plan to integrate these links into the site a bit better later but I did want to mention that the first set of Strange Passion talks from Blueberry Hill were recorded (unbeknown to me) by Bryan Williams. He was kind enough to edit and upload the videos for public consumption and you can find those four talks here:

http://strangeloop.blip.tv/posts?view=archive

I put together a little wrap-up with pictures and some other info that you can find right here.

I've finished tabulating the Strange Loop ratings and I'm pleased to announce the Strange Loop 2009 Rock Stars!

The top rated speaker was easily Charles Nutter with an average rating of 4.79/5. Several other speakers also garnered high ranks across the board and are the 2009 Rock Stars:

1. Charles Nutter
2. Ken Sipe
3. Jeff Brown
4. Bob Lee
5. Alex Payne
6. Matt Taylor

Many other speakers also got excellent ratings and in general I am very, very pleased with how the conference schedule turned out.